The final revision of Q4 GDP was 3.0%, which was the same as the last revision, and actually the same as Bloomberg consensus.

But in reality, there had been a growing wave of optimism that there would be a huge number.

Yesterday, Nomura explained why Q4 GDP was likely to be way higher than anyone expected due to various expectations and adjustments.

They wrote:

The annualized q-o-q growth rate of real personal service consumption was reported to be 0.74% in the second estimate of GDP, following 1.93% in Q3 and 1.86% in Q4. Considering other service-related data for Q4, such as the nonmanufacturing ISM survey and nonfarm payrolls in private service industries, the 0.74% increase seems to have underestimated service consumption. Although our expectation for the third estimate of Q4 GDP of 3.5% is already well above the market consensus of 3.0%, we think that there are some upside risks to our forecast.